In the neighborhood, in a long and distant memory, is a large garage and a sailboat. The sailboat appeared to me years later as I wondered who sailed it and where and did they build it in that garage? 

As a kid I enjoyed drawing boats. As an adult friends took me out in a sailboat at a harbor near Long Beach, California. When the only motion came from the sails you could hear sounds from far across the waters. 

A person named Russ had his binoculars with him. He scanned the harbor intensively, in a way I had never seen anyone do. He told about the life of the harbor, including the dangers of unloading the large container boats. He is involved with whale watching. 

My friend Eric and I, in a small sailboat in a small harbor, did a man overboard drill. You see something floating in the water, could be wood or styrofoam or whatever. You pretend that object is a person and the goal is to bring the sailboat around and retrieve the object. Our first time Rick brought the sailboat around but I lost track of the object. It was a good lesson and we did better the second time. 

Sailing involves a certain balancing of sky with sea, of sea with land, a certain way of reading a relationship with everything that is around, based on experience that keeps evolving. It is not so much a matter of going from one place to another as it is a matter of how. With what grace. With what feeling. With what relationship with sea and sky.